If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

Originally Posted by Blitz Dorsey

We're crazy to think the PED era is over. Ryan Braun (I don't care that he got off on a technicality), Melky Cabrera, Yasmani Grandal and Bartolo Colon are a few of the guys that have been busted in just the last year. Also, it was only 2 years ago when Manny Ramirez, Edinson Volquez and others were busted.

Don't forget: MLB still doesn't test for HGH, which is the new-age steroid. And I'm sure the players are doing things (taking things) we're not even aware of. Then you have guys who are flat-out still taking steroids (like Grandal and Cabrera) just because they're willing to risk getting caught and "only" miss 50 games.

HGH is a dud concerning baseball and PEDS.

The real issue with baseball and PEDS is preventing the ability to get around testing.

"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

Does anyone feel, like me, that HGH isn't as big of an issue as anabolic steroids? I know HGH is a PED but I couldn't care less if a player uses HGH to recover from an injury. Why wouldn't they? HGH is something that is prescribed on a regular basis to deal with injuries. Anabolic steroids are never prescribed for any medical situation outside of sex change issues.

“Our next home stand follows this road trip.”

“I just want to tell everyone Happy Easter and Happy Hanukkah.” says on the day before Easter

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

For the GMs and managers it wasn't about "growing the business", it was about winning games and keeping their jobs. Managers like Tony LaRussa made their reputations and their fortunes and built their Hall of Fame resumes by managing teams that were loaded with steroid users. You can't tell me that Tony LaRussa wasn't aware that his players in Oakland and St. Louis were juicing. Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds and the others? If LaRussa's teams had not been using steroids how many games would they have won? How many championships? Would LaRussa still be considered a HOF manager if his teams had not cheated year after year?

Keep in mind, during the biggest part of the steroid era most of the cheating players were concentrated on just a handful of dishonest teams. The Cardinals, Athletics, Rangers and Yankees were chock full of cheaters, the Giants had one big one and so did the Cubs. All those cheating teams flourished during that time while the honest teams suffered. Teams like the Reds had nobody on steroids or comparatively little steroid usage in any case. What if the Reds' management had encouraged or allowed their players to use steroids? Would it have resulted in more wins? Probably so. The honest people got screwed while the cheaters prospered. It wasn't until the tail end of the steroid era that usage became widespread around the league. Too many players saw the cheaters thriving without any consequences, so more and more players gave in to the temptation.

It wasn't just the players who cheated. The managers, general managers, owners, the commissioner's office and the media were all aware of it. They didn't try to stop it. They benefitted from it. They allowed it to continue and even encouraged it by rewarding the cheaters financially. The media and the commissioner's office actively buried the story for a decade. Even now only a few of the players and none of the coaches and executives have taken heat over their cheating. Baseball and the media are still protecting many other dishonest people who participated in the cheating. Punishing Bonds, Clemens, McGwire and Sosa by denying them induction into the Hall of Fame is fine with me, but let's not pretend that is a fitting end to the Steroid Era. Those players are just the fall guys -- they take the blame and all the other guilty parties get off scot free. It is just another way for MLB and the media to pull the wool over our eyes.

All conjecture, and very reliant on conspiracy. My conjecture is that steroid use was widespread, teams that won during the era did so with big payrolls before revenue sharing, perhaps buying the players who gained the most advantage from using PEDs, but still it was more big payroll heyday. Power hitting records were more what PEDs destroyed than competitive balance. Competitive imbalance resulted from no revenue sharing and big market teams spending their way to winning, not PEDs. The Reds didn't win because they didn't have any pitching, not because they had "clean" players.

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

Keep in mind, during the biggest part of the steroid era most of the cheating players were concentrated on just a handful of dishonest teams. The Cardinals, Athletics, Rangers and Yankees were chock full of cheaters, the Giants had one big one and so did the Cubs.

I don't buy that for a moment. First off, I'll nominate the dynasty Yankees of the late '90s as a fairly low PED team.

Second, that's a convenient narrative for all other teams. Were the Indians clean with Albert, Thome and Manny? The '90s Phillies sure profiled as a juiced team (Dykstra, Hollins, Daulton, Incaviglia). And maybe the Pirates were juiced to the max, but it didn't matter. Maybe the DBacks milked one last big season from a whole slew of their 2001 roster thanks to chemical enhancement. Biggio and Bagwell played with Ken Caminiti on the Astros and that guy was far from clean. Supposedly the Mets had a clubhouse guy who could get you what you wanted. Edgar Martinez got a lot more muscular in his 30s. Brady Anderson is widely assumed to have juiced and Manny Alexander got caught red-handed, so how clean were the Orioles?

And what's the evidence on that one Cubs guy other than he was big and hit lots of homers? Because if that's evidence then how am I supposed to believe Mike Piazza was legit. BTW, no matter what anyone believes about Sosa, Larry Walker was a better player.

Anyway, I don't have roidar and I'm not assuming teams that may have enjoyed the benefits credulous or complicit reporting were the clean ones.

Baseball isn't a magic trick ... it doesn't get spoiled if you figure out how it works. - gonelong

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

Originally Posted by M2

I don't buy that for a moment. First off, I'll nominate the dynasty Yankees of the late '90s as a fairly low PED team.

Second, that's a convenient narrative for all other teams. Were the Indians clean with Albert, Thome and Manny? The '90s Phillies sure profiled as a juiced team (Dykstra, Hollins, Daulton, Incaviglia). And maybe the Pirates were juiced to the max, but it didn't matter. Maybe the DBacks milked one last big season from a whole slew of their 2001 roster thanks to chemical enhancement. Biggio and Bagwell played with Ken Caminiti on the Astros and that guy was far from clean. Supposedly the Mets had a clubhouse guy who could get you what you wanted. Edgar Martinez got a lot more muscular in his 30s. Brady Anderson is widely assumed to have juiced and Manny Alexander got caught red-handed, so how clean were the Orioles?

And what's the evidence on that one Cubs guy other than he was big and hit lots of homers? Because if that's evidence then how am I supposed to believe Mike Piazza was legit. BTW, no matter what anyone believes about Sosa, Larry Walker was a better player.

Anyway, I don't have roidar and I'm not assuming teams that may have enjoyed the benefits credulous or complicit reporting were the clean ones.

Edgar gets an unfair bad rap because that infamous juicer Ryan Franklin was in the Ms organization.

"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

Originally Posted by M2

I don't buy that for a moment. First off, I'll nominate the dynasty Yankees of the late '90s as a fairly low PED team.

Second, that's a convenient narrative for all other teams. Were the Indians clean with Albert, Thome and Manny? The '90s Phillies sure profiled as a juiced team (Dykstra, Hollins, Daulton, Incaviglia). And maybe the Pirates were juiced to the max, but it didn't matter. Maybe the DBacks milked one last big season from a whole slew of their 2001 roster thanks to chemical enhancement. Biggio and Bagwell played with Ken Caminiti on the Astros and that guy was far from clean. Supposedly the Mets had a clubhouse guy who could get you what you wanted. Edgar Martinez got a lot more muscular in his 30s. Brady Anderson is widely assumed to have juiced and Manny Alexander got caught red-handed, so how clean were the Orioles?

And what's the evidence on that one Cubs guy other than he was big and hit lots of homers? Because if that's evidence then how am I supposed to believe Mike Piazza was legit. BTW, no matter what anyone believes about Sosa, Larry Walker was a better player.

Anyway, I don't have roidar and I'm not assuming teams that may have enjoyed the benefits credulous or complicit reporting were the clean ones.

Not sure how any of that disjointed diatribe has much to do with the point I was making. I certainly wasn't making a comprehensive list of players who juiced. I was primarily referring to teams whose managers and general managers may be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame someday.

The point is that certain teams (and their managers and general managers) benefited tremendously from steroid cheating while other more honest teams (perhaps with more ethical managers who didn't allow cheating) suffered. It is pretty obvious that some teams had much greater involvement with steroids than other teams did.

I believe the managers and general managers of those teams were aware of the cheating and chose to allow it. They are guilty of cheating too. It seems that up to now only the players' reputations have been stained by the steroids scandal. Only the players' Hall of Fame candidacies are in jeopardy. In my opinion, if the players are going to be denied induction to the Hall of Fame for their involvement with steroids (which is fine with me), then their managers who allowed it should also be held accountable when they are being considered for induction into the Hall of Fame.

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

Not sure how any of that disjointed diatribe has much to do with the point I was making.

Come on now, that's not even at 10% of my diatribe capabilities. I yawn more stridently than that.

Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling

I certainly wasn't making a comprehensive list of players who juiced. I was primarily referring to teams whose managers and general managers may be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame someday.

I think the problem is that you're now randomly picking good guys and bad guys. Were the Braves clean? Supposedly yes, but maybe we just think that because their local media whistled past the PED use. And you're throwing Sosa under the bus based on what evidence?

My point is you have no idea whether PED use was concentrated on a handful of teams, let alone who those teams might have been (Philly was a glaring omission and the Yankees were a questionable inclusion). You can't make a comprehensive list of juicers. You can't even make an accurate partial list of juicers outside of guys who've been caught or admitted to juicing (and it's not just you, no one can).

I don't disagree that GMs, managers and owners tacitly, or in some cases overtly, condoned PED use, but I'll guarantee your rogues gallery is incomplete and, in cases, possibly mistaken. Maybe the winning teams in MLB were a bit like Lance Armstrong, beating out a well-medicated pack of challengers.

We don't know and I don't see how more uninformed suspicion does anything other than make the whole mess more convoluted.

Last edited by M2; 01-09-2013 at 03:17 AM.

Baseball isn't a magic trick ... it doesn't get spoiled if you figure out how it works. - gonelong

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

I have no more idea than anyone else who did and who didn't use anything. If I had to guess, I'd say the use of PEDs was (and may still be) a part of the culture of the clubhouse during that entire era and the ones we know about are just the tip of the iceburg (that's kind of been mentioned publicly by both Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti but no one wanted to believe it and blamed the source even though both of those guys have proven to have been more correct than anyone wanted to admit as time has gone by). Its why I think using who we think used vs who we think didn't use as a criteria for the Hall of Fame seems silly to me. Either put them all in or keep everyone from the entire era out. Chances are some one who has already used has probably already been elected. Singling out Bonds or Clemens because of incomplete (and who knows how distorted when repeated down the line) hearsay seems like a witch hunt to me. How do we really know that Greg Maddux, Robbie Alomar, Barry Larkin, Pedro Martinez or Ken Griffey JR. never used? There hasn't been any evidence or public accusation and we don't want to believe it, but we really don't know anything.

Either keep the enire era out or put them all in IMO. I don't think the museum should ignore an entire era, where the games were just as important and fans and towns lived and died with each win or loss just as much as in other eras. I'd put them all in. Sure some may have reached some numbers in part because they were PED aided, but lets not pretend that the numbers of others aren't tainted anyway. For example, the 295 foot RF fence with a 340 foot RF power alley in Yankee Stadium may have something to do with the dominance of Ruth and Gehrig might it not? Did an entire era with a dead ball and a legal spitter taint the pitching numbers of Walter Johnson, Christy Matthewson and Cy Young? Did the higher mound reduce the aura of Bob Gibson or Juan Marichal or did it tip the scales for a borderline guy like Jim Bunning? Trying to place some qualification on the numbers is a slippery slope IMO.

Last edited by mth123; 01-09-2013 at 07:11 AM.

"All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it." --BABE RUTH

Having better players makes "the right time" or "the big hit" happen a lot more often. PLUS PLUS

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

There were some interesting points from the transcript of Nate Silver's "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit that addressed the HOF and this vote:

Q: How would you fix baseball Hall of Fame voting?
— MrDNL

A: I'd probably lower the threshold for players getting dropped from the ballot, from 5 percent to 2 percent or so, or have some sort of a sliding scale where the threshold depends on how many times a player's name has appeared. It now seems plausible that Alan Trammell will eventually get in, for example, and it's a little weird that Lou Whitaker got dropped from the ballot years ago when he might otherwise be gathering some support along with Trammell right now.

Q. Given that Barry Bonds will likely be declined a first-ballot visit to the Hall of Fame tomorrow, is there any way to look at numbers from the steroid era (both for those implicated, and those that just happened to play in the era) such that they show actual performance? Essentially, can we actually make any assessments of numbers from the steroid era?
— OhEmGeeBasedGod

A. If we had a list of exactly who used steroids and when, you could do a lot of clever things. But we don't, and the sample of alleged and actual steroids users is liable to be nonrandom and biased in various ways.

Q. Would you vote for Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to get into the Hall of Fame?

— Dovercourt

A. Yes, I think, in large part because the split-the-baby solutions to steroids use are hard to apply in practice. I might use steroids use as a tiebreaker for otherwise very close cases (and I think McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro all fall into that category). But I don't think people should pretend that we can put each player's stats through some kind of algorithm and come up with "steroid-neutral" statistics. We just don't know all that much about who did and didn't use steroids, and when.

“In the same way that a baseball season never really begins, it never really ends either.” - Lonnie Wheeler, "Bleachers, A Summer in Wrigley Field"

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

I've been meaning to throw my two cents in on the initial question. I think some of what Nate Silver said applies regarding Fay's decision. First, I applaud Fay's decision to abstain as opposed to mailing in a blank ballot. The point that Silver made, that some direction from the Hall viz a viz how to address what history will call the Steroid Era is needed. All I'm hearing from Fay, I think, is he personally needs to see some further clarification before he proceeds in voting for this group of individuals. I don't think it's an unreasonable position even if I don't actually agree with it.

“In the same way that a baseball season never really begins, it never really ends either.” - Lonnie Wheeler, "Bleachers, A Summer in Wrigley Field"

Re: John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

I actually like what Fay has done. Baseball writers are a sanctimonious bunch wanting to preserve the history and tradition of the game. We are at the point where we have sure fire HOF's who are not first ballot HOF's. We have voters who won't elect someone unanimously because Babe Ruth wasn't. I would rather have someone like Fay abstain from voting than mailing in a blank ballot and hurt the players that were deserving.

If we view the Baseball Hall of Fame as a vehicle to tell the story of baseball I can see two sides to the story. If you don't think that steroid players belong than I have no problem with a writer telling the narrative that this era was flush with cheating. If a writer wants to say that Baseball, the owners, and Selig weren't strong enough to take a stand then this is one way to tell the story of the steroid era.

On the other hand do you want to tell the story that these are the best players of a juiced up era? We have different era's in baseball, is the steroid era just that? Don't we want the HOF to tell the story of baseball, all of baseball?

As for me I would have voted for Clemes and Bonds, I thought they were the best pitcher and hitter of their generation. I would not vote for Sosa or McGwire who I thought were able to put up HOF numbers because of the needle.

Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please.

Thank you, and most
importantly, enjoy yourselves!

RedsZone.com is a privately owned website and is not affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds or Major League Baseball